What Is “Charisma,” Anyway?

In our leader-focused society, how often do we consider the role of followers?

Barbara Kellerman studies the relationship between leaders and followers at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, where she was a member of the faculty for more than 20 years.

She explains that there’s a word that describes the powerful, emotional bond that exists between leaders and followers: charisma.

“We all tend to fixate on the leader,” Kellerman says. “But the genuine leadership is best understood as a relationship between the leader and his or her followers. And certainly charismatic leadership implies the power of the follower every bit as much as it does the power of the leader.”

In this episode, you’ll learn why the term “charisma” implies that leaders and their followers share power equally – and how that balance of power can lead to different outcomes.

Key episode topics include: leadership, gender, government, equity, power dynamics. 

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: What Charisma Really Is (and Isn’t) (2009)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
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